 Thank you for joining us today for the GIST Tech Connect on how to develop your roadmap to start up success. My name is Ivy Schultz and I am the Director of Entrepreneurship at Columbia Engineering. I'm also an ICOR instructor at the National Science Foundation and an Innovation Coach for Giant Innovation. Today I'll be the moderator of this discussion. Whether you are in the ideation stage or looking for your first round of investment, having a clear roadmap can ensure a greater chance of start up success. But at each step in the roadmap, there are has its own challenges, and that's where building and utilizing a strong network or community can be of such immense value. How do you find team members who complement your expertise, mentors to guide you through your difficult decisions, customers willing to work with you through your products initial bugs, or investors who are a great fit for your solution. We're going to talk today about these questions and more on today's GIST Tech Connect. Today's discussion is co-hosted by GIST Innovation Hub, the 55 Group, an Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Builder and Incubator based in Shambay, Tajikstan. Let me begin by welcoming our panel of experts. Rabshan Kabanov is the CEO of the 55 Group. In addition to providing the vision and direction for the organization, he has worked to encourage the growth of entrepreneurship in Tajikstan through incubator programs, investment and public policy. He has been instrumental in facilitating partnerships with international entrepreneurship organizations to support the Tajikstan innovation ecosystem. Don Baths is a Capital Strategist for the Tech Town, sorry, for Tech Town, Detroit's Entrepreneurship Hub, and co-founder of Commune Angels, a diverse group of investors who seed scalable consumer enterprise and life science companies. Arun Venkatesan is the co-founder and CEO of Vilgro USA, a global network of social enterprise incubators. He has over 15 years of materials R&D, device development, and forward integration of technology into tangible and marketable entities. Thank you all for joining us today. I'd like to point out that you can use the chat window on this page during our live discussion to submit your questions directly to our panelists. You'll notice under the chat window a downloadable worksheet created for today's discussion. We'd like for you to download it now if you haven't already. Our panelists will be walking you through this worksheet step by step, guiding you through answering the questions on it. At the end, we hope to have helped you establish an action plan, or as we've been referring to it, a roadmap. Let's start with each of our panelists telling us a bit more about yourselves. Arun, let's start with you. Hi, my name is Arun Venkatesan. As Ivy was mentioning, I'm the co-founder and CEO of Vilgro USA. Before we started building a global network of social enterprise incubators, we cut our teeth doing social enterprise incubation before those terms social enterprise incubation were coined. Vilgro was founded by Paul Basil in India, and then we've grown into a few hubs in Africa based in Kenya and Southeast Asia based in Manila. I am in the US now coordinating all the hub activities and building this into a formal network. I was the health sector expert during my brief eight years sabbatical in India after doing a lot of these device research and development and all that in the US. While I was the health sector lead for Vilgro, we incorporated quite a few enterprises, I would say 12 to 15. And we form explore different sub sectors and all that. So all this knowledge that is being given here is sort of a condensed version of what we had to develop and frame and all that. So I'm really excited to be here. Happy to guide all the innovators on this call along their journey to social impact. Thank you. Thank you, Don. Hi, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here today. I have had in my journey and opportunity to be a founder, you know, as well as an investor so having both sides or having that experience really helped me help entrepreneurs. What I love to do is strategy and helping entrepreneurs understand this roadmap and how to navigate the roadmap. Capital strategy is a tech town. I get a chance to do that. I get a chance to identify relevant resources for our startups and that may come in the funding or it could be specialized services. I also get a chance inherently with working with them to help them prepare for funding. And as a co-founder of an angel group, I help manage or manage the angel group and help identify opportunities for investment. So it's a pleasure again to be here today and hopefully after we walk through this, you will have a lot more information as you start your journey. Thank you, Ravshan. Hello everybody. My name is Ravshan, Ravshan Kurbanov. I'm a CEO of the 55 Group. 55 Group is a management company. We are managing more than 20 companies in four countries and more than 1500 people work in all these companies. By the way, I'm the Director, Country Director of Sella Network, Central Eurasian Leadership Alliance. And I used to work as a national consultant for the UNDP, trying to develop the whole startup ecosystem and participated in almost all startup development and entrepreneurship development projects here in Tajikistan. With the government, with international organizations, with donors, with private sector. And now we are trying to be an investment company. Just we are lacking a transformation from the management company to investment company. And we now also have some projects on development of venture investment culture here in Tajikistan. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. So for those of you just joining us, we are talking today about how startups can develop their roadmap to success with a particular emphasis on building, utilizing a strong network. Our experts are sharing their perspectives on this critical topic. So please download the worksheet from this page to assess where your startup is in its journey, and answer some key questions regarding networking and community building. So let's start with an overview of the primary stages a startup goes through beginning with the idea stage. And Don, can you please walk us through the main stages. My pleasure, Ivy. So Ivy already mentioned the ideal stage. We also know that five other or five stages after you have that initial ideal. What's really important to note is that while these stages are numbered, oftentimes they may have they may have no they may overlap. So just understand that these stages can overlap as you're going through the roadmap. The first stage is team and market discovery. In this stage, you're really looking for what is the opportunity for the youth. In other words, how are you going to use this and how many different ways can this particular product or this particular technology be used. You're looking at the pathways to get the market. Sometimes we call that go to market strategy. How are you going to find or get to the people that you need to sell. You also sometimes you may have your team already, but sometimes you may not have your full team and I'm sure we'll talk about that later. But you're looking at making sure your team is aligned, as well as beginning to identify if you don't have already advisors and people who can sit on your board to help guide it. The second one will be market validation. You're getting a lot of information at this point. You're looking at potential customers. You're looking at your competitive analysis and what is the value? What is the value proposition for this particular company and how does it position itself in the marketplace or in the full industry? That's very important. Included in that data analysis or that data gathering would be customer discovery. Wanting to know who is that potential customer that you're trying to sell to and oftentimes I hear founders saying, well, we can't find them. And my response is if you can't find them to interview them, you probably can't find the sales to them, right? So make sure customer discovery is extremely important and upfront so that you will know what the customer needs are. The third one is the business model. Really, what are you trying to sell and how are you going to sell it? So you're validating a model, looking at a model and you're identifying and testing assumptions. Because all of these really are assumptions until you start working with customers or clients. They're assumptions and you want to test them as much as you can beforehand but without over testing. And we'll talk again about that later on of how do you go about taking something to market. The fourth one is investment readiness. This is the one that everyone loves to hear about and want to jump to. How do I get the money? I will tell you, traction or what we call traction is extremely important. But even more important is understanding your key milestones and aligning that with the type of resources. And I'm sure you have many, many questions and we'll get into that a little bit more as well. But the important piece here is being ready for the type of funding that you're asking for. And not all funding go with every stage. So it will be very important that you understand that. And then the last stage that we have listed is early stage growth and market penetration. So once you have the testing, your model and your revenue model, which I didn't mention earlier, you want to start looking at how do I scale this? How do I grow? Sometimes we use the term commercialization. That is also another way of saying how do you scale and grow beyond that initial customer or beyond a particular one market or one area. So those will be the five stages that we're highlighting today and I'm looking forward to diving into them even more. Great overview. For our viewers, you can use your worksheet to figure out where your startup is on the entrepreneurial journey. This will help you identify the next steps you need to take. You might also see that while you've moved on to a next stage, you may have forgotten some aspect of a prior stage. Utilizing your network can be one of the most powerful tools for achieving startup milestones. But how do you begin to build that network to then utilize it? And what resources might you already have that you weren't even aware of that can jumpstart your efforts? So who would like to go first? I can. So Ivy, when we talk about utilizing a network that you already have, a lot of times in the incubator community, we say that the first three places that a startup goes to help for are friends, family, and fools. And we belong to the third category. I'm proud to say incubators and accelerators are one place where we take very early stage ideas and we actually run these lean experiments and validations that Don was talking about, even at the idea stage and get them to a proof of concept. So thinking about building a network, I would say I would start with my friends and family. That is to say the professional network. Whatever may work for you, LinkedIn or Facebook or something is a place to start with. But you can really jumpstart that cascade of reactions as I call it. If you tap into a local entrepreneur support organization, be it an incubator or an accelerator, there are plenty of us around who were just waiting to help impactful startups succeed. Really great innovative ideas succeed. So that is some place I think I would encourage all of our innovators to start looking at. If you ever have any doubts about where to begin, you can go back to some of the resources at Venturewell's page or at Willgrow's page or reach out to any one of these entrepreneur support organizations in your country. They'd be just more than happy to help you. One other thing that's critical at this point, I think even at the early stages to identify and resource mentors. The early stage mentors are some are very critical resource because they can map out the path for you and they can actually point out huge gaps in your business model or in your product design that you need to overcome before even you get to the proof of concept stage. And so I think using your network to find somebody who's aligned, who's empathetic to your situation and actually has let's say emotional buy-in and also has this spirit of giving back to the ecosystem. I think finding that person, the initial mentor is very important. That becomes a pathway. Again, not to beat the drum, but to emphasize that incubators, accelerators and other entrepreneur support organizations in your country will help you source mentors. It's great to leverage your network to reach out to them. So this is sort of a virtuous cycle that starts working in. So you try and find an ESO, connects you to a mentor or find a mentor, connects to an ESO, and then you get to keep refining this cycle. I think that would be a great path to go on. I'll pause here and let the other panelists answer this. Great. And as a follow-up question, we'd like to hear from Rav Shah about the role incubators play in supporting a strong entrepreneurial network. Especially your perspective, building and supporting the innovation ecosystem in Tajikistan. Thank you. I just want to add to Arun's 3F, Family, Friends, and Full, 3Gs. It's also from the practice here in Tajikistan. First G is the grants. Go and find the network in the grants organizations, then go to the ground. Ground means just people who are already in this business, the similar startups, the similar spheres of entrepreneurship, the private sector, and the third government, especially in the East countries, governments are very powerful, so they have much opportunities to help you too. So except of these 3Fs, you can also begin your network from 3Gs too. Just a small note. And coming back to your question, I just want to say that here in Tajikistan and I think that in the Central Asian region, the business incubator and all other incubators, not only state business incubator but all incubating platforms, they are platforms where the network players are, first of all, are created and developed because we didn't have five, six years before such terms as VC, mentorship, accelerating programs, incubators, so donors, investment funds, founders, startups. This is all absolutely new for our community. So the incubator was a platform where all these players are accurate. They were created. The second role of the business incubator is it's a place, it's a platform where all these players are communicating and cooperating with each other. So this is the role of the business incubator in ecosystem, innovation ecosystem here in Tajikistan. Thank you. Great answers. So let's put this idea of using your network to meet your startup goals into practice. For example, team building. Firstly, what should founders be looking for when they are building their team? And secondly, how should they leverage their network to find those team members? Who would like to go first? When you are looking for the team, please be very careful about choosing the first people in your team because first opinion, first steps are very important for any startup. Three main rules I advise you. Firstly, choose the people who believe in your idea, who believe in your business idea. It's a very sensitive point. I don't know how to evaluate it, but you just have to feel that this person believes in your idea. Second is find the people with experience because the experience is already investment. Any experience can be evaluated and calculated to the money too. So it's already investment into your startup. And then just try to make a puzzle of your team. So if you have a good finance person, you should have a good technique. Make a team of all people are good in technique, but you don't have any sales person or marketing. So just three simple rules of building the team, I think. Thank you. Great. Aranya, Don, would you like to answer? Yeah, I would wholeheartedly agree, making sure you feel those gaps. You know, sometimes it's easier to find people exactly like you and it's comfortable. And we don't want to do that. We want to make sure we have the core processes or the core areas that, you know, covered. Sometimes you have to go deeper in other areas. You know, you might need more developers if you're developing a platform. So that's understandable, but you want to make sure you don't have just a full team of developers as you begin to build out. And that's something that the funding sources will also look for. Well, we are making an assumption here that you have a team. So let's go to that's the underlying assumption and it's a good one. Particularly when you start looking to grow or funding sources. A one person shop is often not encouraged or not looked upon as a positive because it is difficult to grow a business is to start a business by yourself. You will need help when you're trying to start a business and when you're trying to grow a business. I really resonate with what Ravshan said and Don said. But I'd like to add like the stage color to this and actually pull the curtain back and show the innovators what investors and incubators look at and make decisions on when a team presents their business model to us. It's not the product. It's not the accuracy of the business model. It's not the revenue projections. It's team team team because everything else changes, but the core team is what we believe can leverage whatever resources are available to them, you know, we focus on social impact. And so the resources are very limited. And so we realize that the business models to that product designs change service models delivery models change but the team is the one that delivers impact. So to sort of piggyback on what Don and Ravshan said, if you're in an early stage, I would focus on passion. Alignment like with your mission like Ravshan was saying is great balancing with expertise is great. So but you want to look for passion so that they are able to sort of bend with the wind and not break and deliver this these results that you want. In the early stage progresses to slightly more evolved and advanced enterprises, I would focus on effectiveness and efficiency, not just expertise but ability to deliver on the targets that you need. That's where this puzzle building and this complementarity that Don and Ravshan talked about comes in right where now you've more investors are grants in and you are going to deliver on the promises that you made. And that comes critical and you want to have this complementarity but effectiveness where they don't consume too many resources and efficiency where they make use of time and whatever you can give them in delivering that particular impact that you want to do. You want to you promise to deliver. And I think those those are the things I really wanted to focus on passion initially, but shift towards effectiveness and efficiency as you hire. The one thing I wanted to add was to leverage your network right how do you leverage your network to build this team. Let's say you are in the early stages of building your enterprise. I would say, if you're looking at early stages and passion and then eventually effectiveness. I think you should be a good storyteller. You should take every opportunity you get to interact with your network of friends, family fools, and the three G's that Ravshan talked about and tell your story and tell your story well. And that is how I've seen startups build teams and attract talent, because talent is a big, big barrier to overcome for early stage enterprises because you have to know how do you convince somebody to come and devote a good chunk of their lives in helping you build the stuff. And the way to do that is to be able to communicate your goals, your mission and look for this passion by telling your story widely and deeply. And I think I'll pause there because I think that's what I want to want to leave you with. Great. So let's move on to the topic of investment. We know investment can be critical to a startup success, not just investment, but the right kind of investment and investor. What should founders do to prepare their startups for investment and how can they use their networks to find the right investor. I will try to answer just my personal view. First of all, divide all your investors in the two groups, the testing one, whom you are sure that are not going to give you money, just use them as a test platform. And the second who are possible, who are already in this sphere. So if you know that this investor we see invested into math tech and you have a math tech, don't go to him first, go to testing investors. This is very from the practice I can ensure about this advice and how to prepare your team. The presentation 10 t most important Q&A with the investor. And as I said, we are trying to be a venture investors here in Tajikistan. From our point of view, we are strongly as investors we are strongly looking for three points. First of all, is it is a team, the come how the team is competent, the experience of team is everybody is in his own place, the connection inside the team so when you are going to investor show the potential of your team. Secondly, please make sure that you clearly, clearly transported the idea of your business model to investor. So here's the money, and the money goes to your pocket. The road should be very clear and understandable. The second is business model. And third is the market size. Usually market size goes first or second. When you say that I have a startup and the market size for this startup, for example, $15 million. And I want to start from the 10% of this market. So this is about the money and investor will continue to listen to you. So three things that your team should be prepared when you are networking with the investors. And as I said, divide them into two groups, the testing one, if we can use this word, the testing investors and second is the real investors who are already investing in this sphere. Thank you. Great. Don or Erin? Yes, indeed. I would like to add to that as Rune said earlier, kind of open up and see what really happens behind the scenes. So totally agree with what we shared. This is where some of the things we talked about begin to overlap. So storytelling goes throughout your journey. So as you're talking to investor, there's still another form of storytelling. The storytelling with data and information is not storytelling for the sake of storytelling. So this is where we talked about gathering data, your custom discovery. That helps you tell the story beyond your ideal stage. It helps you begin to bring it to life. It means a lot more when you say to an investor, I spoke to 100 customers and based upon my custom discovery, this is what I've learned. That's very different than I think this is a good product. So as part of that storytelling, you're integrating the data as you're learning more about your product. I also go back to alignment or milestones. So in addition to what they fund, which we mentioned, is also when they fund. So sometimes they are pre-CEC, they are series A. So depending on where you are in your funding cycle, that's when you want to align what you're trying to achieve with those funding sources. And to go even before a pre-CEC, we mentioned government funding. Why is that for grants? Why is that important? That's non-dilutive funding. That means that it won't be debt. It won't be equity. And it's a way to help fuel your business while you're trying to get the traction if you choose to go in front of investors. So bootstrapping is still a thing and it's still very, very much something that you can do if you choose not to go the investor route or definitely not early on. And then to last, the cost of money. Really understand it's a two-way street to me. You're looking at investors and they're looking at you. You want to make sure that you understand what you're getting into, but you also want to understand the cost of money. Sometimes it's not just the money they give. It's their experience, their expertise. Can they maybe introduce you to that next round of funding? And sometimes it may not be an investor. You might be able to get the resources you need particularly early on in stage one and two and even partially in stage three without having that investment. And then lastly, start those relationships prior to needing money. You want to start establishing those relationships before you need the money. That way, they know you begin to understand what's required and then you can align better. I mean, from the horse's mouth, here's an investor talking about what's important. I totally agree with what Don was saying. I think it's important to understand what stage you are in. Are you in the early stage idea, the proof of concept where non-delayative is better? You have some trickling revenue in and you would like some strategic support, then you want a strategic investor. I think that mapping one needs to do to sort of introspect objectively and see where you are. Again, goes to the storytelling point that Don brought up. Passion is really important even at this stage, but data and data-driven decision-making, showcasing that you have actually based this on some data and some experience is very important. What I want to color this discussion with again is think of this conversation with an investor, not transactionally, but as a relationship. Because I know these models that have been presented to you where you have to have an elevator page, etc. These are all important, but investment into your enterprise is not a simple transaction. It's a relationship building. There are many conversations that happen. Deeper dives that happen as you engage with the investor. Be ready for that. Yes, you have to waive them in the first 30 seconds, but it also takes a lot. It's a marathon after that. Like Don was saying, I would even put a number out there and say it takes six months. Plan for six months of runway from the beginning conversation of the elevator pitch to the money hitting your bank account. I would say that. Look at it as a transaction. Map it to your stage and then to Raushan's point, you have to be very clear about who are those serious investors and embark on the journey and cultivate them. I think that's very important. So keep saying the story as importantly. But the key point I want to leave all the animators with is that your investors are also a specialized kind of customer. So do your research on them. So do customer discovery of investors. Understand what value you're going to deliver them, what they want from you, what stage they come in and what stage they exit. People don't think of exits, but really at the bottom line is the investor thinks of a way to exit. Some of them may be pure impact like an incubator with grant, but still there is an exit point where we grow you to a particular stage and we want a particular level of impact delivered. So think about your customer as a investor as a customer and make sure you are communicating those values that you are giving to them like you would to a customer of your product or something like that. So along this journey, that means you have to really do your research on where investors have invested in, what are their investment thesis and mandates and look for the kind of company they're investing in and what is the kind of stage, be ready with those kind of answers and map them. And I'd pause there. I think that's the message I want to leave you with. Great. These are such important points about investment. So let's get a question from the just community that is really good. How do I ensure that my business model will actually work? Is that possible? Okay, I will take that. I would say lean experiments, lean experiments, lean experiments. The mantra is, I think, fail fast, fail often. That doesn't mean you close your company and go. It means you do a lean experiment, see if you fail, if not, integrate it into your learning and go. There are so many tools available. Business model canvas is a great, great one where you refine, refine, refine. Next is refine. You take it to your, let's say your friends and family customers first, check it out, propose a few models and see if that works. Fail fast, fail often, then go back to what I call the extended family. Take a look at them and see if the extended family validates it. With each increasing circle of customers, your risk is higher, but then your experience is much greater and then you'll be much tested. So lean experiments is what I would start with. Maybe I should explain a little bit about lean experiments is to clearly formulate something about one aspect of your business model that you want to test. For example, does do all the product features really offer benefits to customers? That's one. The other thing is to say is payment potential. What is the price point? Whatever I'm selling, will they really pay money for that value? Then is a service model or a rental model or an outright buying better or a subscription or a freemium? These are all different kinds of pricing models. So I just plant these seeds for a discussion and I'll let the panelists take this further. So I'll pause here. Yeah, I would add to that. Particularly early on, don't try to sell your product when you are going to these family friends or extended or potential customer. They should not really know what you're trying to do. You are trying to see if you're solving a pain point. So that's part of that learning and bailing fast and asking questions. The other piece that I would reiterate is all that is good data. Sometimes again, I said earlier people say what no one is responding. That's data and it's good data and it helps you to pivot. If no one's responding, it really helps you to pivot your business model so that you can see if you're really solving a pain point. All right. Let's go to a question from Daniel who asks, what is the minimum number of board members or advisors a startup will need? I can give a feedback to this question. As much as possible, I think, because the mentors and the people in your board, the quality and the quantity is very important. As much as you can, you should add them. Don't make it short. Make it as wide as possible. I would add to that, everyone does not have to be a board member or advisor. So you have mentors, that's a category. You have advisors and you have board members and they each have a different role, even though those roles may overlap and integrate, but you do want to make sure you understand those roles. Typically, particularly early on when we're talking stage one or step one and two, even though you're looking for board members, you may or may not have board members at that point. And the moment you began taking investment and or board members, you also want to recognize that you are asking for input and sometimes you are giving up control. So it just depends on what your business is as well as back to those milestones and just understanding when to map and align all of those pieces. Excellent points. I just wanted to add that as Don rightly pointed out, there are directors in the board, there are advisors and there are mentors and each one has a different kind of an engagement with you. But if I want to go back to the original question about the board, I don't want to touch upon too much on the quantity, that's really your comfort level and there are maybe regulations dictating that five is a good number, but seven is as good as five, whatever. But what I want to say is, remember I mentioned odd numbers because it breaks ties easily, but what I want to say, talk about is the quality of the board. Board is a group that you go to for strategic direction and I want to emphasize that, you want a critical board, but not a board that's going to make life difficult for you. You want them to be the devil's advocates, you want them to be the critical members who are actually questioning you, but helping you along. So there may be a board member who has a spectacular resume, but if the chemistry is not there and the strategic value is not there, it becomes a liability as you progress. Now, typically investors sit on the board, they may not. So remember that subsequent investors look at the board and talk to the board and keep that in mind because a really fragmented board, if I may use that, where people are pointing in different directions, is a tough choice for an investor and actually it's actually an easy choice where people will just stay away from. So the thing to remember is the quality. And then I know I'm not, I don't know if there's a magic formula somebody has for a number of board members, but I want to touch up on one more thing about the board. We always go to, and this is a good learning for me and there's enough material out there. When we think of the board, we only think of them as deriving input from them, but there is also an output point of view and you have to clarify that to the board. So a lot of times board members have such high value and they're busy persons with so much experience and doing many other things. We forget to clarify our asks from the board, be it, hey, share my story, repost my LinkedIn post, or please connect me to this investor and being very specific in the asks would really be good. Even that leads to further discussion and understanding about your own operation sometimes, but I think quality of the board as in strategic input, giving you the proper directions, critiquing whatever you're presenting to them, but helping you along and not creating barriers, that's important. Second is clarifying the asks from the boards, not just inputs, but how you leverage them and their network to go further is important. Thank you. So here's another one. My ecosystem doesn't have a lot of investment resources. How can we reach out to other networks outside our country to find investors? One thing I will say, excuse me about that, is something we said earlier, look for investors who invest internationally. All investors don't invest internationally. So that's a key piece. That's different than just resources or support. That's where accelerators and incubators may play a role. Particularly now, one of the good things if I can say that about COVID it did open up access to things that sometimes we did not have access to because of locale. The virtual aspect has opened up opportunities to participate in accelerators, incubators, or find resources that are outside of the physical location of the founder. It's a tough one. If the ecosystem doesn't have an investment sentiment, then somebody has to build it and a startup is not the best place to do this. So Don's advice of look for an incubator even in an adjacent geography or a favorable geography where people can bring in is good. Now, there is another thing to do. If you have a really cool business model that works in another geography and there is an investor there, it's probably a good lean experiment to prove it in that. Then when you come back in and say, I really want to create impact in my own ecosystem, you will find people. I reiterate Don's point that COVID one of the good things is it has opened up A, many other channels of contacting investors, B, transformed investors' outlooks. They are looking at international investments. And more importantly, C, even in your own local ecosystem, more people are looking at impact investments. So you may be the rainmaker who goes in and starts building awareness. I know it's a tough, tall ask for an enterprise and innovated to do this. But it might be necessary to raise awareness saying, look, only impact investments will move this needle along. And it has worked in many of our programs where as incubator, we seeded companies in new states where there was not impact investment. People actually swarmed around them. And so this is known to happen. Maybe you're going to take your entrepreneurial spirit one step forward and start some awareness-building exercises. I just want to add, according to experience here in Tajikistan, if you don't find investors here, as Arun said, don't be afraid of moving to another country. I know there are much start-upers here who were not successful, not in the business model, but in finding the investors. They moved to Moscow, to Istanbul, to Dubai, to Almaty, and are successful there. So don't be afraid of moving even. Secondly, again, based on the experience here in Tajikistan, search the successful people of your community abroad. So I know the start-upers here who find good successful Tajiks in Russia and find investment from them. So this is also a good way of finding from abroad. But if we go to the classic ecosystem, go to venture funds of foreign countries, neighboring countries, go to accelerating programs, participate there. I know there was a start-up here in Hujan. He participated in accelerating program in Kazakhstan and found the investors there and already make exit, I think. And also this is just from the experience. And if you are not successful in your country, as I said, don't be afraid of moving to that country, to another country. Great. All right. So Philip asks, how do I know my product is actually unique and how unique does it have to be for investors to be interested in it? I can start off. I'm going to say it depends on the type of investor, right? In the Fs that we talked about, the three Fs, as you move further along, there are people that we call forensic investors. They'll get into the details of your accounts and see, and for them, the type of product doesn't matter. But if you go a little bit ahead, little before, who are actually what we call funders, basically they fund ideas and risky business models with a little bit of risk, they would take up your product and they would want it to be unique because that's their mandate. So it goes back to my point about, think about your investor as a customer and do customer discovery and you will know who are those investors who invest in unique products. Now, more important than the uniqueness is the value that it delivers, right? A lot of our medtech products are not earth-shattering innovative technologies, especially in resource-limited settings and impact delivery. It is what I call a soft optimizer. It's innovation, right? It's taking a three or four ideas, packaging them and delivering a particular value to a base of pyramid segment and that's where success lies. So think of it as how well are you delivering value to your customer and that's what basically leads to revenues and that's what leads to investment. And so I would reframe that thinking to looking at do your homework on the investor and see what kind of an investor they are and what kind of products they invest in. And then go back and really refine and see what is the value that you're delivering. So I say that product design is not complete until cash exchange is hence or digital transaction happens and money hits your bank. What that means is somebody really sees value in what you're offering and is buying and is ready to part with their hardened cash so that they support you. And so I would go back to reframing that as is my product unique? Yes, but is it delivering value and are you able to scale and that's what the investor would look for. I'll pause here. I want to add to that. You brought a really good point of room. So investors only a piece of this puzzle, right? They are investing in something that they believe will scale. They want and expect sometimes 10 times what they're investing in. So it's really about the market for it and then your uniqueness, the value, where's the market for that? Is it scalable? And that's a big piece that sometimes we often underestimate that value or that particular piece of it when we're talking about investments. So investments are great. It's even better if I have people who are willing to pay for it, right? And if I have a lot of people willing to pay for then the rest of it will become a little bit not easy, but easier. Great. And this is another question from Nicole, a great question about the change happening in our world recently. So Nicole asks, has the best way to take advantage of incubators and accelerators changed recently? Are virtual programs still as effective? As an incubator guy, I'll take it. Yes. Yes, we actually pivoted to largely virtual programs. And investors are warming up to that too. Grantmakers are warming up to that too. And many of our grantors actually extended deadlines, pushed milestones to adjust for a virtual delivery. Are they still effective? Certain things like customer discovery, some aspects of it have suffered. But a lot of the successful startups actually dug in, leaned their teams. So put them on sort of a maintenance mode so that they don't burn up a lot of their resources. But actually listen to their customers. I'll give you an example in MacTep. One of our companies actually said, instead of saying, why don't you buy my product? We said, do customer discovery. So they changed the questions to, what can I help you with? What is the biggest headache you have during this COVID? And they found a product. They pivoted their manufacturing, they redesigned their manufacturing presence and started delivering without disclosing too much. They started making swabs for COVID tests instead of selling some meter stuff like that. And that became a great bottom line because they actually pivoted and listen to the advice we gave them about customer discovery and actually delivered some value to the customer. There's another company that is making some devices for screening a not so critical part. So they again critical health challenge. So they pivoted. They said, you know, I understand you cannot, this is not a priority now, but here is something we can make for you or help you with. Use a virtual platform for logistics. And then when you are ready, come back to us. And this came out of what we call a diagnostic panel, a solutioning session. And that session was held virtually. So yes, there is still value. Are they exactly like how they used to be? No, because the world has changed. But the appetite for riskier business models and innovation has gone up. And hence this virtual thing has been, we've been able to tune. We've been able to get a lot more experts on our panels internally to our solutioning panels. And they've been quite open about what challenges they are facing and why don't you try this and try that and all that. So that has happened. A conventional investment has gone down, but people are now more aware about supply chain, local supply chain and are open to building local supply chain. Not everything goes to three countries in the world or anything like that. And so I would pause there and say, yes, they are still effective, but I'd really like to hear from the investor on the panel and the consultant on the panel. Rapshaan, can we go to you and hear about the programs that 55 group has run? Have you successfully moved over to virtual? Yes, we had a very huge experience of developing our startup ecosystem here. We had a project startup stand. Now it's on pause. It's like a platform for startup ecosystem players in Central Asia, in stunt countries. We had the first ever done a startup cup here in Tajikistan for one million so many. And we were like one of the first players of developing all this ecosystem here. And then the incubator and accelerating programs that we launched. We have very much successful startups and also teams who are now working very successfully, I think. Great. I was just going to add, we have also a tech town. We have been very, very successful with moving what we used to do in person online. Of course it's an adjustment that you have to look at, how you're interacting, how you're delivering the content, how to keep people engaged, making sure that that is extremely relevant for them. But it is definitely something that we've been able to do and do successfully. All right. It looks like we are almost out of time. And before we go, we'd like to hear some final words of advice from our panelists regarding building and utilizing networks. So each one of you, please go ahead. Arun, you can have us go. Sure. So I would say that recent times have been very challenging for entrepreneurs. They've had to tell their story better. They've had to rethink their entire product or business model or even shut down operations and completely correct. But my suggestion, my advice, my passionate plea to them is don't give up. Name one successful innovator who has not had to pivot their thesis entirely. There is none. Everybody has gone through challenges. Having said that the real successful entrepreneurs have shined in this trying period are ones who went back to the network and listened and were open and said, you know what, if I have to throw out my entire set of assumptions out the window, I'm ready to do that. There are entrepreneur support organizations here, like that Tech Town, like Raushan's 55 group, like Willgrove, who are willing to guide you through the path if only you are open. So don't give up. Continue on your journey. If anything, impact is needed a lot more now in a post-COVID world than before. And investors and other support agencies are a lot more open to locally delivered impact than before. So please, please, please rethink, re-engage with anyone who had dismissed you before and try again. That's great advice. Totally agree. One of the quotes that I like to say is success is not final and failure is not fatal. So whether success or failure, you have to keep going and definitely engage in that ecosystem. There are hidden gems in most ecosystems. In order to find them, you have to talk. You have to meet people. You have to go to some events, you know, so that they will share, not because they're trying to hide, but because they just may not know that you're in the ecosystem. So please, please engage in your local ecosystem, find those hidden gems and keep going. I just want to say thank you for the super platform. It's very important to go back to your experience and think how it's useful for the community around. To the start-upers, entrepreneurs as a small life hack, first of all, when you're doing your network, go and find yourself. Just find yourself. I'm talking from the professional point of view, from maybe psychological point of view. There is a Meyer-Briggs type indicator test. Please go through this test and realize who you are. Whether you are extrovert or introvert, you are a censoring person or you are an intuitive person. You are a thinker or you are a feeling person. You are a judge or you are a perceiver. This test will show who you are. And when you realize and understand who you are from the professional point of view, it will be very easy for you to make a networking. For example, if the investor doesn't understand you, maybe he's an intuitive person. So go and show the values of your start-up. If he is a censoring person, show the facts that you, as Arun I think said, that you already talked with 100 customers. So this is very important. Go and find yourself. There's very much tools how to understand who you are from the networking point of view. But I can advise this Meyer-Briggs type indicator. Google it and go through this test. And two main rules about the network. If you don't utilize it, if you don't use it, you will lose it. And the second, if you don't maintain it, you will lose it. Networking is active, but it's very liquid. If you don't use and maintain it, you will lose it. So be very careful with all the network that you have. Thank you. Wonderful advice. So thank you, Rob, Sean, Don and Arun for joining us and sharing your expertise and experiences. I also want to thank everyone viewing today, especially to the viewers around the globe for bringing entrepreneurs together to be part of this conversation. Even though today's program is over, we don't want the conversation about entrepreneurship to stop. Reach out to us on social media to continue your entrepreneurial journey. Also check back here on justnetwork.org for information about other upcoming just events, including programs like this. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Goodbye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you.